FitBit Charge 3 Massively Overestimating Calorie Burn Goal

[Etien]

I am 19, male, 178cm and weigh 105kg. The BMR calculator that FitBit moderators recommend suggest that my BMR is at around 2050. My calorie defecit goal is about 750 calories (meaning about 0.8kg lost a week). My FitBit also accurately tracks all of my calorie burn during exercise. So what I don't understand, with all of this in mind, is why my daily calorie burn goal is 3,400 calories, or why my FitBit seems to think that I burn about 4,000 calories on average per day despite only doing about 650 calories worth of exercise and 400 calories worth of steps everyday.

For instance, yesterday I did 6,546 steps (just under 400 calories) and I burnt 425 calories at the gym. This works out at about 825 calories burnt through activity. If I add those 825 burnt onto my 2050 BMR, thats 2875 calories burnt. For some reason, however, FitBit measured my calories burnt at 4,064.

With my calorie defecit of about 750 calories, this means that supposedly I should've been able to eat about 3,300 calories yesterday and still be on track to lose about 0.8kg a week. This is absurd!

Across varying levels of exercise FitBit has told me that I have burnt 3242 (12th Jan), 5,901 (13th), 3572 (14th), 4064 (yesterday, 15th), and as of time of writing it is 4:30pm and supposedly I have burnt 2400 calories already today.

I have friends and family with FitBits who get much more accurate readings. What is wrong?

[MakMak]

Hi, @Etien! I agree with you, something seems wrong. There are a few things you can check out. First, make sure your vitals are correct within Fitbit (height/weight/etc). If these are wrong it would be calculating everything else wrong. Next, take a look at the calorie burn and heart rate plots to see if it's registering everything as a high burn or if you're getting high spikes, or if your heart rate is reading particularly high. If all of those look all right, I would suggest getting in touch with Fitbit Support.